The Rape Tunnel: FAKE OCT 14 2009

That's the name of Ohio-based artist Richard Whitehurst's latest work.

The artist plans to place himself in a room, the only entrance or exit being a 22 ft long plywood tunnel constructed by Whitehurst himself. Then he says that for the duration of the gallery's opening (from 7:00 p.m. to midnight) he will rape anyone who travels through the tunnel into that room.

Whitehurst prototyped the idea with a previous project called The Punch-You-In-The-Face Tunnel.

As it turns out, I ended up breaking the nose of the third person to crawl through the tunnel, an aspiring model. She went to the hospital and eventually sued me. Her modeling career was put on hold. The civil case was long and drawn out and the matter still hasn't been resolved. To this day she still has unpaid medical bills. The point of this long aside is that all this took place two years ago, and I'm still having an impact on this young lady's life, something not many other artists could claim about their work.

Rape seemed like the next logical step.

Me? I would have built The Tickle Tunnel. I guess that's why I'm not an artist. (via mxml)

Update: Oh, hell, it's fake. (thx, dozens of people who aren't saps like I am)